HYBRID WAR SPECIALISTS working in Kakakhstan say they studied the violent 2019 Hong Kong “revolution” attempt. Then they gathered experienced activists from the 2014 Ukraine revolution and flew to Almaty in Kazakhstan to prepare for the current mayhem in that country.
We “studied the experience of protests in Hong Kong and other countries,” said Dzmitry Halko, who is from Belarus, a fourth location with a recent violent attempt at revolution.
In Kazakhstan the hybrid warfare specialists met anti-government groups and immersed themselves in local culture. “I even ate what Kazakhs ate, wore a skull cap, and dreamed of a white yurt and a white horse in the vast steppes,” Halko said in an internet statement.
His admission was highlighted by Clint Ehrlich, a university researcher specializing in Russia-related geopolitics.
It’s interesting, since Halko has long been presented by Radio Free Europe as a “journalist”; and hybrid warfare as a myth. (While presenting itself as European free press, Radio Free Europe is really a US State Department mouthpiece run from Washington DC.)
FOSTERING HOSTILITY
Hybrid wars operate on two fronts, political manipulation and active engagement. US agencies feed millions of dollars to anti-government groups in Hong Kong, Thailand, Kazakhstan, Cuba and other places to foster local hostility to local leaders. Then the local activists are linked to “revolution consultants” who train them in weaponizing street protests while claiming total ownership of media-friendly terms such as “democracy”, “freedom”, and “human rights”.
A key technique is to initially piggyback the uprising on a local point of sensitivity, such as the monarchy in Thailand, the extradition law in Hong Kong, petrol prices in Kazakhstan and so on; over time, these are then quietly replaced by the BBC and other Western media with the label “pro-democracy demonstrations” to whitewash the operations.
WHY KAZAKHSTAN?
While it is impossible to know the exact thinking of the US State Department strategists, commentators have noted numerous factors likely to have been involved in targeting Kazakhstan.
- Kazakhstan borders Russia and China.
- “Uranium from Kazakhstan is enriched in Novouralsk, Russia, and then returned to Kazakhstan for use in Chinese nuclear-fuel assemblies,” says Ehrlich.
- Also, Kazakhstan is a key pathway for the world’s largest trade route project, the Belt and Road Initiative, started by China.
CLAIMS DISMISSED
People at Russia’s Foreign Ministry said yesterday that the violence in Kazakhstan had clearly been “inspired from the outside”, echoing statements from Thailand, Hong Kong, Belarus, Syria and elsewhere about violence in their territories.
Ehrlich says that NED [National Endowment for Democracy] delivered US$1 million to anti-government groups in Kazakhstan in the past year alone. America claims NED is not part of the CIA. This is true, Ehrlich says: “But it’s a distinction without a difference, since NED has taken over part of the CIA’s mission.”
Leaked documents showed that the US spent millions to support anti-government forces in Hong Kong in 2019.
The Western media routinely trivializes or dismisses claims of outside interference.
But voices around the world, including US citizens, have started complaining about them. “There is no difference between CIA and NED financing,” said commentator Ned Austin yesterday. “It’s US government funding of anti-government forces. It is the usual US meddling and should be stopped. It is dangerous and in no way makes the US safer.”